HRI 2013 is the 8th Annual Conference for basic and applied human-robot interaction research. Researchers from across the world attend and submit their best work to HRI to exchange ideas about the latest theories, technology, data, and videos furthering the state-of-the-art in human-robot interaction. Each year, the HRI conference highlights a particular area through a theme. The theme of HRI 2013 is "Robots as Holistic Systems". This theme is intended to highlight the importance of research on all aspects of robots used in everyday life and work activities. The HRI Conference is a highly selective annual international conference that aims to showcase the very best interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research in human-robot interaction with roots in robotics, social psychology, cognitive science, HCI, human factors, artificial intelligence, engineering, and many more. We invite broad participation. Important Dates: 10 September 2012: Submission of full papers and tutorial/workshop proposals 27 October- 1 November 2012: Rebuttal Period 19 November 2012: Notification of full paper acceptance 3 December 2012: Submission of late breaking reports and videos 18 December 2012: Notification of late breaking reports and videos 6 January 2013: Final camera-ready full papers, final camera-ready late breaking reports, and videos due Full Papers: Authors are invited to submit full paper manuscripts. Eight camera ready pages, including figures, are allowed for each full paper. Accepted full papers will be published in the conference proceedings, archived in the ACM Digital Library, and be presented in an oral session. To facilitate quality interdisciplinary reviewing, full paper submissions will be required to be tag their main contribution as "human-centered," "technology-centered," or "both." Strong technology-centered papers contribute novel and sound algorithmic, engineering, or computational methods that have the potential to improve robot performance when interacting with actual human users. Strong human-centered papers contribute experimentally sound and interesting findings that have the potential to improve robot technology for interacting with humans with respect to usability, design, and similar topics. Late Breaking Reports: Authors are encouraged to submit their Late-Breaking Reports in a short paper format which is limited to two pages. Accepted late breaking reports will be presented as a poster, and will be published in the conference proceedings, and archived in the ACM Digital Library. Video Session: We invite videos related to all aspects of HRI. Besides the importance of the lessons learned and the novelty of the situation, the entertainment value will be judged. The video itself must be self-explanatory for the audience. The videos will be published in the conference proceedings and archived in the ACM Digital Library. Tutorials and Workshops: Proposals are sought from those wishing to organize a Tutorial or a Workshop on a HRI-related theme. Tutorials and Workshops will be held on March 3, one day before the main technical sessions. Exhibitions: There will be an exhibition site at the conference, and promoters are encouraged to display state-of-the-art products and services in all areas of robotics and human-robot interaction. Topics of interest include: Collaboration between humans and robots Social robotics Mechatronics and robot platforms for HRI HRI for field and service robots Robot learning from human guidance and demonstration User studies of HRI Art and design for robotics Robot middleware and software architectures Lifelike robots Robot companions Assistive robotics (autism, healthcare, rehabilitation, aging in place) Telepresence robots Robotic navigation and mobile manipulation Dialog and natural language for HRI Mixed initiative and sliding autonomy Privacy and security for real world HRI Perception and recognition of human actions and activities Safety and physical interactions between robots and humans Task allocation and coordination Metrics and benchmarking for HRI HRI group dynamics Multi-modal interaction, perception, and decision making Long term interaction with robots Autonomy and trust Ethnography and field studies Ethical and societal issues of HRI Enabling reproducibility and interoperability in robotics